Saturday, June 28, 2008

Truly we feel blessed to have four of the BEST kids around. I'd like to say they are perfect, always, 100% of the time. But since they have imperfect parents in an imperfect world I suppose we can leave room for some mistakes. ;) Today was just one of those "off" days. Despite our removal of television watching it seems the older three children have decided a little bickering was on order today. Bickering, whining, and fighting make this mum CRAZY! I'd had enough and the kids were up for some redirection. Skyler earned a chore yesterday for something he'd done and the girls earned themselves an extra chore today for just being catty. My baseboards were in need of cleaning, the trim around the doors a bit fingerprinted so we had a match!

Nichol was NOT happy and her face let me know that. She crossed her arms and scowled. Skyler immediately started negotiating. He wondered if he went the extra mile and washed all the doors if I'd give him a dollar. Uh. No. This is discipline remember? Olivia was THRILLED and began telling me how this reminded her of Cinderella (I giggled because my sister in law posted about her kids saying something similar this week as well) and how much FUN this was going to be. My idea of discipline wasn't working the way I'd planned. Skyler seeing an opportunity for more negotiation he said he was out of a job because he was a boy and Cinderella was clearly a girl. I quickly informed him he was Cinderman and would most definately be working. Nichol, still annoyed, glared at me. I told her she should embrace this because it would help her to know how to clean her baseboards when she was a mama. Not missing a beat she replied, "I won't need to know how mom, I'll make my kids do it". (I laughed so hard, I had tears)

Showing the little babes what I expected and how the job was to be done. They got along perfectly doing their little chore, I was quite pleased with how things were going. Next thing I know they are mopping the floor (not what I had asked them to do) and singing!

Remember this was supposed to be discipline? GRR! Not only did they sing through their chore, they did both levels of the house, they did a great job, and they asked for more. Who knew?!